Bought in for $200, cashed out $1200. I still find myself playing fancy on occasion, but have toned it down to the levels I mentioned earlier meaning isolating limpers and button raising, plus the occasional raise when someone donkbets me or check-raising a dry flop when someone bets weak like 1/3 pot or less. No more squeezing or playing back at anyone who raised. Im not sure if it's really all that profitable, but I just do it because it seems like the right thing to do. Interestingly enough, the few times I did it I royally sucked out and hit some bullshit hands, but it didnt matter because villains ended up folding 150BB pots when I shoved the river. I dont know what to make of this. They call and call and call and then somehow find a way to fold on the river, making all my fancy play irrelevant since I never saw a showdown.
So tomorrow (or today depending on your timezone) I'm going to rent a car and just cruise around vegas. Wh00sel mapped out a nice route to get a feel for the avg vegas neighborhood, so I want to see what the landscape is like here and if I can see myself living in it. Obviously vegas is a blast, and I've had such an emotional rush being here I stopped even taking pictures because pictures just cant do it justice. You have to see it for yourself to understand.
Walked through the bellagio and ceasars palace, what a dump. The bellagio is alright, although clearly dated compared to a brand new establishment like the Aria. Saw Doyle Brunson in Bobby's room just waiting for action. Ivey's room was full but I couldnt recognize anyone playing there, besides some asian american I've seen on TV.
Now that I know how casino's work, I must have ordered about 30-40 mixed drinks lol. I made sure to tip the waitresses $2 each time for tending to me nicely. Got my first meal at the table comp'd, so that was a nice surprise. I havent bothered checking my comp status so I have no idea where I stand, but supposedly they'll just knock the rest off my final bill when I go to check out. Have 3 more full days here. Plan to spend the morning/afternoon sight seeing and the late afternoon/evenings grinding.
Man I would love nothing more than to just fuck my job and never come back home. Just find a longterm hotel rental at the Aria until I get settled, or get an apt if they'll lease me with no job and never look back. This just really feels like my calling, the life for me. It feels so right. Going back to my miserable job fixing computers just feels depressing as all fuck. I have no intention to move up limits, but if I somehow ended up finishing +10k here in vegas, I would have no reason to return home after adding in my savings/poker earnings. It's just too fun out here. Hell, at this point I'd take a job making $15/hour and supplement the rest playing poker and be proud to live in vegas, until I go full time playing poker that is.
Landed in vegas a few hours ago, checked in to my room and went straight for the tables. Having never played in a casino, those drinks the waitresses keep bringing by are completely free right? And people just tip them like $1 or so for every one? Most important, will they make you any drink you want for free? I mean can I order some nice vodka beverages and it's all on the house?
Anyway had a good first run. Bought in for $200 at a 1/3 game and cashed out $540. I nitted it up to start, but couldnt help but attempt to isolate and target a few players with no joy. I just dont know enough about that stuff, and bleed off a good 30BB's before I recognize it just isnt working. I seem to do alright stealing blinds, but I just cant quite understand how to properly iso/squeeze and what to do on certain flop textures. I keep trying to balance my range even though I know it's pointless because nobody cares, I just cant help myself, it feels like the right thing to do.
Apparently people are allowed to use cash for chips on the table. I turned a flush and missed a shit ton of value vs 2 pair because this guy had $100 bills under his stack and I just wasnt looking at that. I looked at his chips and thought I put him allin by sliding a stack out, only to realize there was a good $300 behind that I missed in value.
Other than that, the casino is great, the Aria is ridiculous, and I feel right at home in the live setting no different than playing in my home town.
I'm flying out next week and will be spending the week in Vegas staying at the Aria. However my main motivation in doing this isnt to play poker. I'm actually scouting Vegas as a city to live in based on the following factors:
1) I hate my job
2) Bored living in "The South"
3) Ridiculously good prices on Vegas homes
4) Proximity to California
5) Live poker scene
6) Front-runner for legalized online poker
I know the job market in Vegas is described as "terrible", but I think a lot of that depends on what you do for a living. Regardless, I plan to get a job first, and move out second just to be on the safe side obviously. I'm hoping Vegas will offer many more levels of enjoyment in life than South Carolina will.
With all that being said, since I'll be there for a week, can anyone recommend some things to do & see for a prospective resident? I dont mean bars and concerts and stuff, I'm sure I'll get my fill of entertainment on the strip alone. But rather what are some of the prime neighborhoods I should drive through to get a taste of vegas lifestyle? I dont mean the insanely high-end stuff, but places where one can reasonable expect to live paying $200k for a house. Where are the shopping districts that most locals visit?
Having never stayed at vegas before, how do these "room comps" and stuff work? I'm likely going to spend a week there next week or so and hear you can get discounts from your room for playing in their casino, sort of like a VPP system. I'll just be playing NL200 and maybe NL500 depending on success. If the comps dont really cater to low stakes players than am I better off just finding whatever I can afford and commuting to the casino?
FYI - I really want to stay at the Aria, or any comparable hotel like the Bellagio next door. Otherwise I just plan to stay at the Luxor which is like 5 blocks down and 1/3 the price.
Like a pickle got dills. First time ever shooting a gun.
Gotta say, it was not what I expected. The gun has a lot more power than I was prepared for, and the concussive forces were shocking. In fact it was a bit jarring and scary to hold the thing and I never quite got used to it. Just knowing what I had in hand, instant death. The slightest move of my finger and your soul is mine. It doesnt feel right to be honest lol. Man should have to earn this kind of power, it's all so effortless.
Anyway I think I found a gun I'm settled on. It's a Springfield XD subcompact 9mm. Since this gun is for one purpose only, a tool for self-defense and nothing else, it meets all the categories which are important to me. I do not intend to go sports shooting or blowing up watermelons or any of that shit. Just something I can become proficient with and save my life one day.
This gun has a number of features which really speak to a technology oriented person like me. The gun is just so well thought out. It has dual safety's, one built into the trigger itself, and the other into the grip, instead of the traditional hollywood style side safety switch. You never have to actually disengage the safety, it's ready to fire when you hold it, yet it will not fire without you pulling the trigger. The safety is always on, but always off. It's a 9mm which is plenty powerful. It's small and lightweight, yet heavy enough to inspire confidence. You can easily conceal it, and keep it portable wherever you go. It has an underslung rail for adding attachments like lasers and tactical light. It has a very simple breakdown/cleaning procedure. It has a "round chambered" indicator so you never have to worry about if there's a live round in there or not. The firing pin slides downward when the safety is on so that it cant fire if you drop it on the ground, or even throw it. It has a 16 round magazine which is kinda nuts, but I guess you cant complain about having too much ammo. And it's pretty damn accurate for such a small gun.
Going to test shoot a few more before making a decision. Today I fired a glock 9mm but didnt like it at all, despite being halfway decent with it. Sticking to the 9mm class of weapons since they have plenty of stopping power, but arent too unwieldy to shoot.
So today I had a rather unusual encounter. While entering the freeway to head into town some maniac started tailgating me at 80 mph. Not just normal "get the fuck out of the way" tailgating, but like 2 inches-directly-from-my-bumper-about-to-cause-a-crash tailgating. So I speed up a little but realize I'm not going to do 100 mph until I get a ticket, meanwhile cocksucker is still on me like I've got a dead body hanging out the trunk. He finally decides to pass and I let him, only to get up to my window and start flipping me off and other retarded shit, so I just gunned it and blew right past him again.
Once again he starts tailgating me beyond the threshold of safety, so I let off the accelerator and coast down to about 35 mph on the freeway while he continues to stay behind me, until he finally goes for the pass and I just slam on the gas and take off again. He catches up to me again and starts waving goodbye which I dont quite know what to make of, and I start running out of freeway and am forced to enter city streets.
I'm a little nervous to let him box me in at a traffic light or something so I continue to take known roads until I reach a Wal-Mart parking lot. Then we just drive laps at 15 mph around the entire parking lot as he continues to chase me or whatever. I finally punch in the GPS to go to the nearest police station and figure I'll let him chase me there and see what happens. I am forced to stop because a car gets in front of me, at which point he quickly comes up beside me and starts yelling "go on little girl! go on!". I dont really understand what his deal is but I got the impression he was giving me the right of way, which I can only deduce to mean he thinks I cut him off somehow. I usually enter the freeway pretty fast just for the fun of punching the accelerator, but I also make sure the road is clear before doing it. I'm a very courteous and observant driver and there's no way I cut anyone off.
So it kinda got me thinking that this guy might be a psycho, and I'm sitting here having to keep my car in motion to make sure he cant get beside me and shoot me or throw a bottle at my car or whatever. I have a fast car (5.0 mustang) and can pretty much outrun any normal car, but then again I dont really want to have to endanger myself just to run away from some asshole.
But people are crazy in the world and I dont want to become Zimmerman's next victim, so it got me thinking. Aside from my car, I dont have any self-defense capabilities in this world. I dont know how to fight obviously, plus my attacker may not fight fair, I dont have a gun, taser, baton, etc etc. I started to feel like a statistic, like that person who gets mugged/killed because there was nothing I can do. Most people get all self-defense oriented after something shitty happens to them because they dont ever want to let that happen again. I kinda felt like this was a little wakeup call. There have been plenty of times where I'm in sketchy neighborhoods, ATM machines at night, etc etc, where I am just a big target and it would be nice to know I at least have a chance. Afterall, thats why the call a firearm "the great equalizer".
So I'm going to go to a shooting range tomorrow and see what it feels like, because I've never even shot a gun before. I'm also thinking about tasers (the kind that shoot) but since those are basically one-shot only, and look close enough to a real gun that my attacker may start shooting first, I'm still leaning towards good ole fashioned bullets as my best defense.
My goal is to keep this weapon tucked away somewhere in my car. They make car holsters for putting it under your drivers seat, between the seat and arm-rest, etc etc, so you can grab it faster than going for the glovebox.
I've been hearing talk for the last year about Bodog/Bovada and how incredibly fishy it is all the way up through midstakes, and figured surely they jest, else all reg's would be playing there. Supposedly Bovada went out of their way to make the software as uncomfortable for regs as possible so that they simply would refuse to play there. Being a single-table rec player I decided it's time to see what all the talk is about, and put some money on there through a ridiculous process of $100 deposits via some check card I had to get from a gas station.
I must say, the games do seem good. Hardly anybody is ever fullstacked, lots of limping and mind-boggling calls and otherwise total chicanery. This is all at NL200 mind you. And I can see why the regs will never play here, the software is simply the most painful thing you can ever imagine. For starters, the only way to top off is to do it manually after every hand, there is no auto-reload. Furthermore, you must topoff immediately following a fold, otherwise the game ignores your request and you will continue to sit there with $43 for the next hand.
If you stand up from a table you cant sit back down for 5 minutes, no matter what. This means you cant switch seats to gain position on a fish. You stand up, you're basically out. There are no waiting lists, so you can never tell which tables are the juicy one's. You cant even see full tables. The only tables in the lobby are tables with open seats.
Multi-tabling is rage inducing. The game does not do much to notify you in the way of active tables. There are no hotkeys for betting, everything must be done manually. The bet-slider and bet-sizer feel awful. The entire process of multi-tabling just feels gross.
Now you've probably heard about the new hand history feature, whereby you can see everyone's holecards, even without showdown after 24 hours. Aside from the fishpool, this is one of the more fascinating features. The HH's are stored on bovada's server and accessed through a search tool, like browsing PTR to see a hand on someone. It's been very interesting going through yesterday's sessions trying to learn the bluffing frequencies of fish, their true limping ranges, what an UTG minraise means, etc. Since most fish all have a similar playstyle there's plenty to study here.
For instance, I find even the worst players arent really stealing your blind that much. Limping ranges are always trash. Calling ranges are trash, preflop and postflop. Stuff most of you already know. But it's still good to have it reinforced since sometimes we convince ourselves to play -EV because you just cant quite ever be sure if you never see their hand. I find myself playing a much more relaxed game now that I have reviewed 100 hands or so where I just had to know what someone had, and feel much better now about making the correct folds and not getting too spewy.
Do I recommend Bovada? Absolutely for any thinking recreational player, no matter how bad you are. Do I recommend it for grinders? It's hard not to since it's free money, but I can never imagine any grinder putting up with this interface. You thought merge skins were annoying? You've never seen anything like this. I'm sure anyone who plays 12+ tables can make up the difference in EV on Stars vs Bovada's 4-table cap.
A few weeks ago I decided to take a shot at home games again. Every few months I'll drop a buyin at NL200 and hope for a winning session. Finally I had a few. There's this brand new cardroom which just opened up a couple of weeks ago in Florida I want to take a shot at. Below is a graph of my earnings to date, which I intend to bring with me.
I know it's not much, but I've always wanted to play in an actual poker room. Mainly so I can play as long as I want, switch tables, and just to experience the ambiance of it all. I recently discovered overbetting which seems to have helped produce some profits in my short sessions. The general idea is to get pots mostly HU, and take it down with a cbet or value bet TPTK. I still dont feel I'm really "doing it right" overall though. I just bleed too many chips cbetting these massive pots I have created, or get pot committed with overpairs & draws by the turn. Anyway I plan to play 1/2, unless I book a huge session and then maybe I'll buy in once at 2/5.
Here were my notes when I first started playing:
Money is won FROM REAL HANDS, not big bluffs.
Do not play unsuited semi-connectors
Do not play unsuited connectors from any position except the button
Do not cbet with poor equity
Do not call cbets with intention to fold turn. Idiots turn 33 into a bluff.
DO NOT call down with less than top pair without a read.
NOTHING FANCY postflop. Players arent bluffing that much.
It’s GOOD to occasionally raise 89s/Axs/K9s UTG.
It’s OK to occasionally limp 89s/Axs/K9s from EP. Fold more often OOP.
BE PATIENT. They will pay you off eventually.
My notes have now evolved into:
Abuse position vs limpers
Squeeze at every opportunity
Cbet 99% of the time HU/3way
I think my new notes have been introducing a lot more variance/spew, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. Any advice welcome and appreciated.
I take a single buyin shot at NL200 live a few times a year when I can, just hoping for a little rungood when I do, and now that time has finally come. +5 BI's in a week = fun time. It's always nice to see your work go towards something, so I took Holly for her first joyride in a private plane.
Just found out my dad passed away last week. I hadn't spoken to him in 6 years. We used to get along great, then one day he came to visit and we got into a big fight over something stupid. I walked away and just never spoke to him again. Him and my mother are my only family. My mom and I get along great, but I think he was too ashamed to ever try and call us to make amends. At first I was punishing him. In part for him threatening to hit me, and because there are certain things I dont like about myself which I attribute towards him, such as my tilt control and motivation in life.
As the months and holiday's went by, I would talk myself out of calling because I thought it was too soon. Then as the years went by I was afraid to call because I thought it would be weird. One day while I was at work I actually got a call from him. I wasnt at my desk at the time but it showed on the caller ID. He didnt leave a voicemail, so I figured if he wants to talk to me he'll call back soon enough. Again months and years went by and I was too afraid to initiate first contact.
Now he's fucking dead. The apartment manager where he lived had to look me up. She used an online people finder service to find out who to contact since he didnt have any information about his family on file. My dad was a loner, just like me. He had no friends or family at all. She told me the hospital called her because she was listed as his emergency contact. Thats right, my dad listed his apartment manager as his emergency contact. They told her he died of cancer.
Apparently he contracted some type of cancer in his arm about 2 years ago, and for whatever reason decided not to seek medical help and rely on self-healing techniques instead. My dad was always kinda hippy'ish like this, but not beyond reason. The manager and him were friendly, and she noticed the tumor on his arm but he refused to talk about it. Eventually he went to the hospital and started chemotherapy for a year before another tumor appeared on his neck. By this time all his hair had fallen out and he was frail and weak. She said he looked deathly ill. One day he told her he was admitting himself to the hospital and would be gone for awhile. She said she knew he wasnt coming back. About a month later he died under a morphine drip in a hospital bed.
She begged him to provide contact information for any family members possible but he refused. I'm not sure if it was out of spite or embarrassment. Perhaps he was just as scared as me to contact us for help. Maybe he didnt want us to see him in such condition. Maybe he thought we still hated him. The point is he was a good man and he died painful and slow, all alone in the world, thinking nobody loved him and nobody cared. I'm glad his pain is over, but I can only imagine what he went through for the last 2 years. He wasn't Osama, he wasn't Hitler, he didn't deserve to die like that. The manager said he didnt leave much behind in his apartment. She felt very sorry for him, knowing he didnt talk to anybody. He was just a shy quiet type of man.
As I reflect on past communication, it wouldnt surprise me at all to find out right around the time he called me was when he probably discovered he had cancer. I almost called him over christmas under pressure from my g/f but decided not to out of anger, an anger that didnt really even exist. You see I wasnt really that mad about what happened. As I said earlier, I was just sorta punishing him for no good reason. Sort of like hurting a small animal to satisfy some sick desire in yourself. I felt good by making him feel bad.
I cant begin to describe my grief now. So if there is anybody out there in the world who you havent told you loved in awhile, tell em now while you still can. Dont let stupid petty shit fuck with your relationships. I'll be flying to texas to collect his belongings and arrange to have his body shipped so my mother and I can bury him. We will probably be the only 2 people there.
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